Putting The Farm Back In Herbfarm

The Herbfarm, under a new chef for the first time in 17 years, has been experimenting with Mangalitsa pigs on its menu for a while. Soon, though, it’s planning to go whole hog, bringing its own mini-herd of the Wooly Pigs to Woodinville.

“We’re making a lot of cheese, we’re making all the butter for the tables, we figured we might as well get all the way back to basics,” said chef Keith Luce, who took over from Jerry Traunfeld in the fall. The pigs will join the chickens that the restaurant is already raising for eggs.

The pigs will be finished off on delicacies such as the whey from the restaurant’s cheesemaking. In a nod to the acorns eaten by the top-tier Iberico pigs of Spain, the Herbfarm Mangalitsas will be fed hazelnuts. “What is more Northwestern than hazelnuts?” Luce said.

When I first heard about the Mangalitsas I wondered if they would turn out to be over-hyped, and was prepared for chefs to tell me that the pork emperor had no clothes. It didn’t turn out that way. Luce, for instance, noted that he’s been fortunate enough to work in both France and Italy as well as some fine places in the U.S., that he’s worked mainly with heritage breeds and even set off on a cross-country search a few years ago for the best (he found the Red Wattle pig to be “incredible”). Even he thinks the Mangalitsas are the closest thing to European pork he’s found here.

“The quality of the fat is just ridiculous,” he said, and the flavor is something like wild boar, but better-textured and less gamy.

He expects the pigs to arrive in a few weeks, and plans are to slaughter them in the fall. The older animals are best suited to charcuterie, and Luce plans to use them for lardo, for guanciale, for “pretty much everything you can do snout to tail.”